


Dolor Lake

by Rumpels



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark, Depression, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 23:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14007576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rumpels/pseuds/Rumpels
Summary: A sweet monster who feeds on happiness lives beneath the surface of Dolor Lake.A story about the depression that follows a happy manic.





	Dolor Lake

Lurking motionlessly beneath the glossy surface of a presumptuously endless pool of inky water is a monster.

 

It isn't your typical sort of monster like the kind with greying flesh, yellowing fangs, or beady, soulless eyes. It doesn't breath fire or spew venomous liquids from some secret pouch behind its gills. It doesn't groan or moan or shriek or cry. It lays in the quiet, unmoving so as to not disturb the water's surface.

 

(Isn't it funny how the water is so very dark and smooth? Doesn't it seem as if you could saunter out across it without falling helplessly into its depths? Isn't it enticing to try?)

 

On occasion, but only when you've fallen for that trick before, it'll talk to you sweetly, candy-coated words flow effortlessly over sugary lips--a siren's call that pierces the surface so subtly that you could have sworn it didn't come from the lake.

 

And it speaks.

 

_You're worthwhile. You have purpose._

__  
You're perfect.  
  


_**I love you.**_

 

_You're not strange!_   
  


_I'll be your friend._   
  


_I'll hold you. I can make the pain go away._   
  


_**I care about you.**_

 

It's not like the curiosity of the first time where you unknowingly slipped into the frigid waters. You were naive then. But what you didn't know was that after the first time you'd fallen in, it would consume bits and pieces of the colors--the lightness. Each time after that, it would take more and more.

 

So when you'd claw your way back to land, soggy and desperate, with bloodied fingers digging into the slick, wet, clay, your world became dull. Each time, the grayscale became more prominent.

 

Soon the color and life, especially of those around you who basked in the floral foray of the meadows beneath an endless sun that was theirs to command, became too bright to bear, and you'd slink away to the water's edge to save your eyes from their rainbow of offences. That's when it first began speaking.

 

So, you listen.

 

You listen because you're lonely in your isolation, wondering where all of your spark has run off to, completely ignorant that it is the same monster whispering soft sonnets in your ear that has stolen it from you.

 

And you're pulled in again.  
  


It doesn't take long before your passion (for anything, really) has been surgically removed from you and so you fall into an era of indifference.

 

_Yes, that's fine._

 

_No, I don't care_.  _Please stop asking me._

 

Because you don't care. You once cared far too much and you realize that caring too much hurt much more than not caring at all, so...it's not so bad, you suppose.

 

Only, there are so many other things that you have lost passion for...so much so that it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to merely get out of bed in the morning and face another day, where you'll have to force yourself to make decisions about things that you care nothing about.

 

You're in a constant state of cosplay, wearing your own skin and pinning your mouth back into a freakishly false smile that somehow appeases the masses. You force a laugh. You fabricate emotions out of knowing what you're supposed to be feeling in any given situation.

 

You wonder, though, what the depths of the waters have to offer. You need to discover if it has a way to stop the constant struggle against your monochromatic world.

 

Wading slowly through the darkness, you let the monster lead you carefully beneath the surface and, for an instance, you find peace in the cold silence.

 

Until.

 

Until your body forces you to breathe in the putrid water, setting your lungs ablaze. At once, your instincts take over, and in an instance you're nothing more than a panicked, flailing mass that crashes through the surface, shattering its illusion.

 

You fight back to the shore so you can lay your broken body in the mud, sobbing and calling for the god you disowned in your decent. Laughter and songs in the distant meadow drown out your pleas and your anguish overcomes you, wrapping you in a blanket of indifference until you find your next reprieve.

 


End file.
